Gove said: "We followed the advice we received from the Cabinet Office … We have received a view from the information commissioner. I am waiting for the Cabinet Office to give us updated guidance in the light of what the information commissioner says. In the meantime, we have chosen to act in line with the guidance we have received from the Cabinet Office."

The education secretary was cross-examined by MPs on Tuesday at a session of the education select committee, which included questions posed by the public on Twitter. More than 5,000 questions came in as tweets with the hashtag #AskGove.

One of the Twitter questions was to ask Gove which Bond villain he would be – the reply was Hugo Drax.

The minister said: "Wasn't it Hugo Drax who was responsible for the rocket in Moonraker? Scaramanga had an interest in ballistics, but having an interest in rocket science is probably more appropriate."

At this point a member of the committee told Gove: "Your advisers want you to stop speaking."

One of the most popular Twitter questions was whether Gove would shadow a teacher for a day, to which he replied "yes".

He said: "[It's] a campaign led by the Anti Academies Alliance, a Socialist Workers party-backed campaign, an NUT official who operates at taxpayers' expense – representatives of all the enemies of promise."

Gove was repeatedly pressed over whether he had acted on the information commissioner's advice and taken steps to ensure that private emails that might be subject to FoI requests are not deleted.

He confirmed the department's own chief freedom of information adviser had ruled last May that private email accounts were covered by transparency laws.

But he told the committee this advice conflicted with that of the Cabinet Office, which said anything held in a private email account was not subject to disclosure under FoI.

Labour MP Lisa Nandy asked Gove three times to say whether he or his advisers had ever "used private email accounts in order to conceal information from civil servants or the public".

He replied: "I have always followed the advice that the Cabinet Office laid down on Freedom of Information.

"Sometimes I have sent emails on my private account to my wife about whether or not we might go to the theatre and, on the whole, I would have thought that that would have been something that, while the civil service or the public might have been interested in it, it wouldn't necessarily have been appropriate to share.

"There are many different interpretations of how the Freedom of Information Act might apply, and I have always followed the advice I have received from the Cabinet Office."

Departmental business can only be conducted by going through officials, which inevitably means that any emails will "touch down" in the Department for Education (DfE) account, Gove said.

Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, ruled last month that information held on private emails can be subject to FoI if they concern government business.

He said: "This has always been the case – the act covers all recorded information in any form."

In a separate report, the information commissioner's office said last month: "Once the Cabinet Office has issued new guidance, DfE should issue further new guidance or update existing guidance to explain the legal position regarding private emails and FoI in more detail."